(Happy) New Year!
* New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest – December 31st, 11:59 pm *
10…9…8…7—-
As my living room television froze at the worst possible moment, I thought to myself: “Wow, what a great start to 2022”. I shouldn’t have cared about this minor inconvenience as much as I did, which made me wonder: why do I hold onto that first instant of the New Year so tightly? Why do we all feel the need to ring in the next twelve months the “right way”?
Every trip around the Sun sings a song of embedded duality: a clean slate full of opportunities, confronted with the anxiety of time passing and the urge to reinvent myself. And according to the numbers, well, I’m not alone. “80% of New Year’s resolutions will get abandoned around this month. In fact, one study found that gym sales dropped precipitously from January to February”, stated one Forbes article.
“Out with the old, in with the new” takes on whole other dimensions around this time of year. There is undoubtedly some comfort in the fresh start a new year gives you; a no-strings-attached deal with the good (and mostly bad) of the last three-hundred-and-sixty-five days. A world of endless possibilities, defined solely by your own limitations. Nonetheless, it can all feel rather asphyxiating at times. The pressure to make this upcoming year count. The countdown in our mind reminding us our planet is burning. The fear of the unknown and the unexpected. The anxiety of the years passing and getting older. Then, there are New Year’s resolutions. All like Valentine’s Day, I’m convinced this “tradition” is nothing but a money-grabbing marketing scheme that has evolved to measure our self-worth.
Do You, an online yoga and fitness platform says resolutions often fail because “most of them were made based on emotion, and not logic. Impulsive epithets you drunkenly swear on the first day of the New Year, or ones that you promise yourself out of guilt because you didn’t get around to doing it last year.” A Magazine Singapore adds: “New Year’s resolutions easily make you feel like you’re failing yourself. Because they’re often such poorly formed goals, they’re also incredibly difficult to keep for the long-term. You don’t need more reasons to be mean to yourself.” There is no need to constantly find shiny new facets of ourselves year in and year out. Instead, if we redirected that energy into finding concrete habits, activities, ways of thinking & acting that benefit us in the long run, wouldn’t that be worlds more effective? All this being said, yes, January 1st is the beginning of a new chapter, one that should be approached in the healthiest way possible. But instead of attaching ourselves to goals, why not lead with values and set our intentions along the way?
Of course, this is easier said than done. From seeing everyone’s 2021 recaps on social media to feeling like your teenage years are being thrown away to the mercy of the pandemic, the urge to flip your life around and try a million new things is strong. Luckily, most of us barely have anything figured out right now, let alone the next 365 days. There are dreams, hopes, and aspirations brewing within us, in a world ready to meet them with open arms, closed doors, love, and disdain. To this I quote Abraham Lincoln and say: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Thus, I believe that the best part of going from December 31st to January 1st is not only watching Times Square’s ball drop when the clock strikes midnight but learning to throw yourself into the unknown; new year, same incredible you.
